The mutineers are living in a Hogwarts fantasy world – where all it needs to
achieve growth is a wave of the magic wand

The Conservatives have a do-or-die decision to make before the next general election – and it is not about the identity of their leader. They must decide if, having dominated the 20th century, they are serious about being a party of government in the 21st. They must decide if they want to retain their reputation as the nation’s crisis managers. They must decide if they want to be seen as political grown-ups, or a bunch of overgrown kids using Westminster as a playground.

At this stage of the Parliament, Ed Miliband was expected to be the tribal chief facing a leadership crisis, and the Lib Dems the party answering hard questions about their commitment to office. Yet, in February 2013, it is David Cameron who is being undermined by talk of a leadership contest, and the Conservatives who – in some garrulous cases, anyway – are more deeply preoccupied by internal party intrigue than by the governance of the country.

The reports last weekend of a fledgling plot to install the MP for Windsor, Adam Afriyie, as Tory leader seemed initially like a fabulous spoof to brighten up the long winter nights. But it soon became clear that there is indeed such a campaign, grooming its candidate for greatness. There is something manipulative and drearily patronising about the off-the-record claims that Afriyie could be the “British Obama”, simply because of his ethnicity.

For all I know, he may yet demonstrate that he has the stuff of greatness, but it is absurd to suggest that he has already done so. To most voters, he is what Donald Rumsfeld would call an “Unknown Unknown”. Small wonder, then, that the agitators for change – let us call them the “Afriyards” – are themselves confused. My favourite sentence in last week’s newspapers appeared in Friday’s Guardian: “The manoeuvring has exposed divisions among supporters of Afriyie.” The People’s Front of Judea, it seems, is already splitting.

All this, of course, is meant to be a warning sent from the parliamentary party to Cameron. On Tuesday, his MPs will send another such shot across the prime ministerial bows with the vote on gay marriage. The Government will win, thanks to Labour and Lib Dem support; but, as things stand this weekend, its political managers expect as many as half of the Tory party’s 303 MPs to vote against it. Last July, 91 Conservatives opposed the Coalition’s plans for Lords reform. There have been mutinies on Europe, rumblings over HS2, a mood of easily triggered confrontation between Government and MPs.

For this disconnect, Cameron must accept some of the blame. He was right to take robust action over the expenses scandal in 2009, but did too little afterwards to restore relations with his bruised backbenchers, many of whom felt ill-treated by the young, wealthy Cameroons. His early attempt as Prime Minister to neuter the back-bench 1922 Committee backfired badly. He could have spent more time glad-handing in the tea-rooms, soothing those MPs denied promotion by Lib Dems guaranteed office by the terms of the Coalition.

Yet the mutineers are wrong about almost everything else. They blame Cameron for not winning the election outright in 2010, glossing over the fact that the Tories still gained the highest number of seats in an election since 1931. Even now, he is consistently ahead of his party in the polls. And – much as the Right grumbles about the Lib Dem “tail wagging the dog” – the comparative stability of the Coalition that many Conservatives didn’t want in the first place has made possible radical policies on (for instance) welfare, schools, localism, a referendum lock on future EU treaties, an immigration cap, the lifting of two million workers out of income tax, and a far-reaching austerity blueprint. Incomplete as it is, the inventory is certainly more impressive than what a Tory government with a small majority would have achieved.

It is astonishing, too, that so many around Westminster still talk about a “leadership challenge”, even though the Conservative Party rules have prevented such a manoeuvre since 1998. To force a contest, the rebels would have to get rid of Cameron first – and, as we know from his Sunday Telegraph interview last month, he intends to stick around until 2020 at the earliest.

What, more to the point, do the rebels want? It used to be a tougher line on Europe, but now that the PM has offered them repatriation of powers from Brussels followed by an In/Out referendum, they have had to find new grievances. Most of the supporters of the increasingly baffled Mr Afriyie call for economic recovery and more aggressive spending cuts. It strikes me that some Tory MPs wish the world were like Hogwarts and that growth could be produced by a spell: if only George Osborne would point his wand at a small pile of coins and cry: “Engorgio!”

Unfortunately, Potternomics are not enough in a complex, globalised system. No chancellor – no act of ministerial fiat – could have prevented, say, the chilling effect on the British economy of the eurozone crisis. And often those MPs who shout most loudly for a “proper growth strategy” are the fiscal nimbys who object most strenuously when new infrastructure proposals threaten the unspoilt landscape of their constituencies.

As for spending cuts, there is no doubt that more are on the way. Osborne’s Budget, to be delivered on March 20, is almost ready. The spending review will follow later this year, and was the subject of a recent Cabinet discussion in which Iain Duncan Smith’s colleagues pushed him for further welfare savings. But if the insurgent MPs think that what the Tories are missing politically is more austerity, they are madder than they seem. Osborne’s cuts may look modest on a graph. But they will not feel modest in MPs’ surgeries, or on protest rallies, or in grim case studies on our television screens, when they really start to bite.

The notion that Cameron is a loser holding back a party of winners is so far from the truth that one fears for a political movement in which such a view is almost respectable. The Conservatives have long been in the grip of the Führerprinzip, the notion that everything flows from leadership. The trouble with this pathology – for pathology it is – has always been that it encourages mutinous instability as much as slavish devotion. Accordingly, one of the Tory party’s gravest misconceptions is that all difficulties can be overcome by a change of leader.

Cameron will not be replaced before the election. But the mutineers can cause a lot of damage between now and then, feeding headlines, exuding recklessness, setting ultimatums: sack Osborne, perform strongly in the 2014 elections, deliver growth – or else. Or else what? Each time such a threat is made, the only sure consequence is that the voters become more convinced that the Conservative Party didn’t really learn its lesson in 13 years of opposition. Cameron has made mistakes, but none as lethal as the campaign of self-harm upon which the plotters are now engaged. The problem isn’t him. It’s them.